


G(odd/iant)ess

by orphan_account



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Intersexuality, Lady Loki, Pseudo-Incest, also Frigga/Odin because they're married, always-a-girl-Loki!, i'll add the avengers when/if they show up, pseudo-fashion, pseudo-politics, um
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odin is not called the Allfather without due reason; it is true that he is an entirely paternal figure. Therefore, standing in the chill of Ymir’s temple, looking upon this forsaken child, Odin wants desperately to pick the babe up and give him a life in Asgard instead. </p><p>Laufey does not like the little Odinson one bit; personally, he believes the Odinson must be the largest and most spoilt brat in existence, as the child is only a century and a half old and yet his tantrums are already widely renowned across the realms.<br/>Nevertheless, this marriage would be a better use to put the half-thing, sell it to the Odinson for peace and the Casket instead of leaving it to become a frozen corpse.</p><p>(Reworking of<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/518559/chapters/915995"> Ásynja</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	G(odd/iant)ess

Odin’s empty eye socket still sluggishly oozes blood when he catches sight of the jötunn babe lying on the cold stone floor of Ymir’s temple.

The child is small, more the size of a godling than a jötunn. He looks too frail and too skinny, malnourished. Poor thing can’t even seem to conjure up the energy to wail and squirm like any babe his age undoubtedly should. Clearly, he has been abandoned, unwanted, and likely left out to die of exposure for the sole crime of being a runt.

It is truly a painful thing to see, and Odin’s heart aches for the child. The babe has been left out to die alone in Jotunheimr’s frigid winds, totally and completely unloved. Left out to fade away in the desolate wastes of a dying world.

Odin is not called the Allfather without due reason; it is true that he is an entirely paternal figure. Therefore, standing in the chill of Ymir’s temple, looking upon this forsaken child, Odin wants desperately to pick him up and give him a life in Asgard instead. Perhaps it is odd that, even as Odin’s furs dry matted with jötunn blood, he longs to steal away one of their unwanted sons and give him a good life.

As it is, Odin cannot give the poor child a good life. The only thing Odin can offer a jötunn infant left out to die slowly from exposure is a quick and clean death.

His heart switches from aching to unbearably heavy in a matter of instants. Odin reaches for the babe, carefully picking him up by his swaddling and careful not to touch the icy-blue skin, lest he get frostbite.

Closer up, Odin can see clearly the family lines running down the child’s face. One of Laufey’s brood.

With this discovery, Odin decides that he has been too lenient with the jötunn-king who stole his eye. To let Laufey, the conniving snake, keep his life and rule is too soft a punishment for one who left a child out to die.

Odin wants to go back and dole out a penance even harder upon Laufey; first, though, he must take care of the child, and ensure he does not suffer too awful much when his soul passes onto Valhalla, Helheimr, or Folkvang. Odin spares a moment to soothe the infant’s uneasy cries before the Æsir king draws his dagger.

Odin steels himself to slit the babe’s throat. As the blade draws nearer, one of his fingers brushes up against a tiny blue ear.

He almost drops the dagger in surprise when a milky white color flushes and blossoms over the pale blue, family lines sinking smoothly into the skin. Tiny, sleepy eyes turn from a dark red to soft green.

Where there was a jötunn boy in his arms, there is now a little godling. This changes everything.

Odin sheathes his blade, and finds that he has two sons where before he only had one.

He draws the boy deeper into dark furs matted with blood, and goes to confront Laufey again.

-o-

  
Laufey does not move even an inch in his throne when he spots the Allfather approaching; he is an ice sculpture, and he refuses to crack or melt under the old man’s judgmental gaze.

“Allfather,” Laufey’s voice rumbles in his frozen throat. “Scarce ten minutes since you ended the Long War with Jotunheimr, and back again already. Why have you not left with your army? Do you mean, perhaps, to start the war up again?”

“No, Laufey-King. I would not start up such bloodshed again before my men were rested properly, or before Jotunheimr had a chance to rebuild her armies and lands.” Odin replies.

“What is it, then,” Laufey asks quietly, “that you have returned to my palace for?”

Odin moves aside his furs, and pulls something out from underneath them. A babe. His wretched babe. The babe he meant to be born perfect, hale, and strong, and was instead born small, flawed, and halved. The child now wears the skin and eyes of a goddess, but Laufey knows it to be his child nonetheless.

The sight of the damned half-thing makes Laufey angry.

“I found a child of yours in Ymir’s temple. You know that no realm on the Tree is in support of infanticide.”

Laufey also knows that no realm on the Tree is currently in support of Jotunheimr either, but he does not say that. Instead, he sighs and directs a scathing glance to the child in Odin’s arms. “The Jötunn do not keep half-things, Allfather.”

“It’s crueler than I thought you capable of,” Odin says conversationally, “to leave your own babe out there like that to die a slow death. It is your child, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Laufey confesses grudgingly.

“Good,” Odin says. “Then I believe we have a solution here, for what seems to be all of our problems.”

“Oh? What problems are these, and what is your solution?”

“The problems are simple. Your problem, Laufey-King, is that your Casket has been taken from you. My problem is that I do not wish for a young infant like this one to die.”

“The solution?” Laufey asks, with eyebrows raised.

“Let me have this child,” Odin implores, gesturing lightly to it as he speaks. “The babe would stay and live in Asgard, with no claim to your throne in Jotunheimr if that is what you wish. It would also be a part of a political agreement that would allow you the Casket back sooner.”

“You think to use the blood of Laufey as a hostage?” Laufey says.

“Essentially…” Odin hesitates, “yes.”

“Fine,” Laufey waves his hand as if he has no cares about what happens to the child. “Do as you want with it. The child is of no importance to me, and the Casket is. The choice is obvious.”

Odin nods, and turns to leave.

“Oh, and, Allfather?” Laufey calls before Odin can leave completely. “I should perhaps warn you. The child is not a proper jötunn, but instead a half-thing like you Æsir and Vanir.”

Odin turns back, surprise clear in his one remaining eye. “Ah. Which one of the halves?”

“It has the parts of a Dam, and not those of a Sire.”

Odin hums, tucking the child back under his furs. “That should do nicely. I may invite you to her nuptials, in a century or eight, Laufey-King.”

Laufey smiles, cold like a shark. “Would its nuptials happen to coincide with your son’s own wedding?”

“Perhaps,” Odin admits.

Laufey does not like the little Odinson one bit; personally, he believes the Odinson must be the largest and most spoilt brat in existence, as the child is only a century and a half old and yet his tantrums are already widely renowned across the realms.

Nevertheless, this marriage would be a better use to put the half-thing, sell it to the Odinson for peace and the Casket instead of leaving it to become a frozen corpse.  
Laufey nods slowly. “Then it is done. The child is yours to do with as you please, then.”

Odin makes for the door again, before he turns to face Laufey again. “One last thing before I depart, Laufey-King.”

“Yes, Allfather?” Laufey’s patience is running thin.

“What is the girl’s name?”

Girl. What an ugly half-thing word, not a word Laufey ever wanted applied to one of his children. To think one of his brood had been born a half-thing. Due to her sire’s Vanir blood, no doubt – well, he will not make that mistake again.

“I had not thought to give it a name, Allfather.” Laufey says, shrugging carelessly. “Decide its name for yourself. Now leave this place.”

Odin finally, finally departs for the Bifröst site. Laufey watches him go with slit eyes, and is glad to see that the Allfather does not spare even one glance backwards.

-o-

Frigga is not happy to see Odin when he arrives.

If he had the decency to see the healers and bathe first, she knows she would be pleased to see her husband back from war safely. However, the raw wound of his eye isuncovered and frightful, dried blood cracking around the empty socket.

Thor looks like he cannot decide whether to celebrate loudly because his father was triumphant against the wicked jötunn or to be upset about his father’s stolen eye. He also looks like he is going to be violently sick when he fully sees the gaping openness of his father’s wound.

So as soon as the throne room empties of soldiers and noblemen, Frigga shoves her husband out of the room. “Do not come back until you’ve bathed and dressed that horrific wound properly, Odin.” She orders him, starting to shut the door on her husband.

Odin jams his foot into the crack before she shuts the door properly “Wait, wait!” He says, before drawing something out from underneath his fur cloaks. He shoves the rough little bundle into her arms before she has time to react, turning on his heel and booking it down the golden corridor. “Support her head, love!”

He has actually made it out of her sight before she realizes that what Odin passed to her is actually a baby girl.

Where on Midgard did Odin get a baby during war? If this child ends up being one of his misbegotten bastards, he will be very lonely for the next few years indeed. She snorts at the image of Odin sleeping on the lavish settee in their private sitting rooms while she has the bed all to herself.

Then Frigga sighs, and sits down on the steps to the dais upon which the throne sits. She fumes with the tiny girl in her arms for some time. Her son looks adorably confused by all of it, as is expected at his young age, and eventually joins her to sit on the steps.

Thor snuggles deep into her side, staring at the baby with wonder in his eyes.

Then he turns to her, for answers she does not have.

“Who’s that, Mama? Why did Father bring her t’you? Is that a sister? Did Father bring me back a sister?”

Oh, Odin had better hope he did not bring Thor back a little sister. Frigga sighs again, more heavily than she did the first time, and answers her son. “Hush, Thor, I’m not certain myself. We must wait for your father to return, as he has all the answers here.”

“That’s boring,” Thor says unhappily.

“Boring, yes,” Frigga agrees while bouncing the baby girl on her lap. “But there is nothing to do about it. While we wait, however, would you enjoy hearing a story?”

-o-

When Odin returns to the throne room, he is clean and dressed in fresh clothes, with bandages wound around his face to hide the emptiness of his left eye socket. Thor leans asleep against his mother’s side, one hand limp in his lap and the other one lying gently on Laufey’s girl.

Laufey’s girl still sleeps softly in Frigga’s arms. Frigga, who sits angry and tense on the golden steps of the throne, looks up at him with fire in her eyes. Odin wants to cringe, or beg forgiveness, even though he’s done nothing wrong.

The challenge will lie in getting his wife to see that.

“Put Thor to bed, Odin Borson,” Frigga says calmly. “We shall have words once you have done so.”

Scooping Thor into his arms is not hard, and neither is slipping his son under the warm covers in the nursery wing. Facing Frigga, however, is likely to be very hard indeed. Odin returns to the throne room with something awful that feels like fear in his stomach.

 

Frigga passes the child back to him with more force than was probably necessary. She frowns, and whispers angrily, “If this is one of your bastard children, Odin, I will not forgive you.”

Odin tries to interject and explain now, before Frigga starts ranting, but she cuts him off with a single annoyed sound before continuing to speak. “I love you faithfully, and I will not just roll over and allow you to bring every single child you sire into the palace. I will not abide that, I simply will not!”

Odin makes soothing noises at both his wife and the girl who has been woken up by Frigga’s hushed irritation. “No, love, wife, this girl is not one of my spawn. Trust me, dear. The girl…she is Laufey’s daughter.”

Frigga’s eyes widen. “You,” she hisses out, quiet and deadly, “brought a jötunn into the palace. A royal jötunn, at that. Do you mean to incite the Long War again, or did you lose your mind along with your eye?”

He tries to make a placating gesture, but with the girl in his hands it is all but impossible. Odin goes for the next best thing. “Be calm, Frigga, for there is no harm in it. Laufey will not rain destruction upon all of Asgard for her being here; he has given his blessing in it. She was unwanted for being a runt,” Odin says, “and for being only female where all jötunn are both.”

“So you brought her home to spare her life?” Frigga says, anger swiftly disappearing.

“Yes,” Odin hesitates, “and the past facts make her a perfect candidate for a marriage of state between Asgard and Jotunheimr.”

Frigga tuts. “Thor is so young still, though, and the girl just a babe. You certainly cannot raise her with the intentions of her being Thor’s bride.”

“I am aware of that - but a princess abandoned to die by her own father and king is not something I could abide. If in the end, Thor does not desire to marry her when they are both of age, they will not have to! She could be like Freyja and Freyr, and just become a part of court.” Odin explains.

Frigga sighs. “I suppose that is acceptable, Odin. Just…do not mess this up, because it will all be on your head. Now, what is the girl’s name?”

Odin frowns. “It is up to us to name her. Laufey did not bother.”

“Oh, that bastard,” Frigga says tiredly. “How about Drifa? Mjoll? Fonn?”

“Frigga, all of those names mean snow.”

“And? She is jötunn.”

“We are not going to name her ‘Snow’ simply because she is jötunn!”

Frigga mockingly pouted at her husband. “Fine. What about Loptr?”

“It’s close, but not perfect.”

“Hulda?”

“No, not at all.”

“Well, we cannot name her Thordis, that’d be awful of us. Let me think…wasn’t there a there a jötunn lord named Loki, once? Loki of Utgard, wasn’t it?”

“Nasty fellow,” Odin says, “but yes. Why?”

“Loki is an Æsir name as well. And it’s a nice name, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it is.” Odin stares at Laufey’s girl, who coos gently in his hold. “Loki Odinsdóttir. Well, it certainly sounds good.”

“Then so be it.” Frigga declares. “We can present her to the court soon, can’t we?” She directs the last bit at the baby girl in Odin’s arm, sing-songing it out.

Odin thought that for as upset as Frigga had seemed to be upon catching sight of the child, she certainly warmed up to the idea of raising a young jötunn princess for their own. He felt that perhaps giving her a little girl to fuss over would make her happier than a brood of sullen princes ever could.

“Give me her,” Frigga says, arms outstretched for Loki. Odin passes her Loki and watches Frigga bounce the child in her arms as she speaks. “Let’s see. We need a cradle to be set up in the nursery, and a wet nurse…Do jötunn infants even drink milk, though? Ah, and we can put her in Thor’s old frocks for a century at least, though I’m sure we could get some new toys for her.”

Odin nods.

Frigga stops bouncing Loki for a second. “Would you explain it to Thor and the court for me, so that I may do everything else?”

“Of course. First, though, could we perhaps go out to the gardens and rest a while? War tires a man, you know.”

“Oh!” Frigga says. “No, never mind that. Go to sleep Odin, and when you wake I’ll have everything done except introducing Loki to the court. So go rest, love, I have it all under control.”

“This is why I love you, Frigga. Besides all of your other exemplary traits and your stunning beauty, of course.”

She snorts. “Go to bed, dear.”

“Yes, yes. Goodnight, sweet Frigga, sunshine of my life, my beacon of hope in a dull grey world – “

“Bed, Odin.” Frigga says, shaking her head in amusement.

-o-

Thor sleeps soundly throughout the entire rather noisy redecoration of the nursery, tuckered out by a child’s enthusiasm and stirring only once or twice. Of course, this means that as soon as Frigga has placed Loki in the newly placed cradle and shushed her to sleep, Thor decides to wake up and be as loud as physically possible.

Frigga tries to hush Thor down to quietude, stressing all the time that, “it is very important that you don’t wake the baby Thor, promise me you won’t wake the baby?”

“O’ course, Mama!” Thor announces, cheerfully and loudly.

“Not so loud, Thor!” Frigga warns him urgently and quietly. Then she whispers, “Do you want me to tell you about the babe?”

“Yes!” Thor enthuses, obviously trying to keep his voice down.

Frigga takes hold of a child-chubby hand, and leads Thor across the nursery to the plush chair she uses to tell him stories. She sits there, drawing Thor upon her lap, and allowing him to settle into her.

“Her name is Loki,” Frigga starts.

Thor grins. “That’s a nice name.”

“Your father and I thought so too…Hm. Where to start? You know, of course, of the war between Asgard and Jotunheimr.”

He eagerly nods. “Yep. The Long War, righ’?”

“Yes, clever child,” Frigga says. “After your father won the war, he saw a baby jötunn girl left out alone in the snow. Abandoned by her parents,” she concludes quietly.

“But why would someone leave their babe out in the snow?” Thor asks, with blue eyes confused and sad. “Don’t parents have to love their babies?”

Frigga hugs Thor close to her, resting her chin on his flaxen head. “They ought to, but some don’t. Some are cruel like that, son, and you are lucky to be innocent enough not to know that.” Frigga sighs heavily. “I suppose they just didn’t want her. She is very different from any other giant, Thor. She is smaller than they are and a girl only where they are both girl and boy.”

“That’s very sad,” Thor says. “But it’s good, right? Since she gets to live with us now?”

Frigga tweaks her son’s nose playfully. “Yes, that’s very good.”

“Then I’m happy for her,” Thor announces. “She gets me as a big brother, right?”

Frigga hums. “Yes, I guess she does. Do you want to hold your new little sister?”

Thor pales. “She’s so small, though.”

“And?”

“IIf she was big like a proper jötunn I bet I could hold her. But since she’s small I’m ‘fraid I might break her.”

Frigga quietly laughs, squeezing Thor close once more. “You won’t break her, I promise you.”

Thor doesn’t respond. So Frigga, feeling wicked, runs her fingers up the side of Thor’s pudgy baby belly, tickling him until he starts to seize with laughter. “Let it not be said that the mighty Thor is afraid of anything, hm? Not even a tiny jötunn girl, right?” Frigga asks mischievously.

Thor is still giggling when his mother’s barrage of tickling subsides. “I s’pose it wouldn’t hurt to hold her later, if I was really careful.”

Frigga nods, faux solemnly, letting Thor go toddle off her lap and around the nursery. “Play quietly,” she tells him, and then they wait for either Odin or Loki to wake.

-o-

Frigga instructs Thor on how to hold his new sister properly, and leaves the two children under the watch of a nanny while she speaks with Odin in the hallways.

“So, husband, what shall we tell the court?” She asks, catching her husband’s hand and squeezing it.

“The people know you were not with child.” Odin says slowly, “so we cannot claim her for our blood. Moreover, the fact that we would marry her to Thor makes claiming her as the child of your body a bad idea.”

Frigga nods. “The house of Odin is not a den of incest,” she agrees.

“So she is not of our blood, but we will raise her as such,” Odin muses. “Something close to the true occurrences would work, would it not? I found her abandoned with no parent in sight, and took her in as my daughter.”

“That should work,” Frigga hums. “We will not tell them she is jötunn?”

“There are too many prejudices left in Asgard,” Odin admits, “and I think we would end up fearing for her safety.”

“This is true…but are we not going to tell her she is jötunn?”

“We may, when she is older and better able to understand,” Odin sighs. “Not while she is young. I don’t even know how one goes about explaining to a child that her birth parents left her out in the hopes she would die?”

Frigga nods, squeezing Odin’s hand again. “This is good,” she says. “Asgard needs a princess.”

-o-

  
Loki blinks sleepy hooded eyes up at Thor, legs kicking weakly in the air. Thor grins at the sight and descends to blow messy raspberries on his new sister’s chubby baby belly.Her legs and tiny fists start to flail wildly as she laughs, inciting Thor into laughing as well.

Thor’s nanny, poor woman, does not laugh. Instead, the woman taps her fingers impatiently. It is bath time, and the young prince is stalling.

Her charge is grubby and sticky. There is a victory feast in honor of the Allfather and his triumphs against Jotunheimr later tonight. If it takes all of Asgard to get the task completed, she will get him cleaned up.

The nanny grabs the collar of Thor’s shirt and uses it as leverage to wrestle him out of the nursery, away from the baby.

-o-

  
While Odin holds Loki in his arms and officially introduces her into the court as Loki Odinsdóttir, Frigga holds a squirming Thor tight in her lap. She gently pinches her son’s upper arm, whispers to him that a prince must not fidget, and then plops him into his own seat next to her.

Loki’s introduction as princess of Asgard ends and Odin hands her to a waiting nanny; the nanny doesn’t wait long before she absconds with Loki. When the door closes, the nanny hidden away behind its gilded front, the feast begins in a roar of voices and clanging plates.

About two thirds of the way through the feast, Thor slips off the chair besides Frigga. He leans up to whisper, “I’m going to go check on Loki, Mama,” loudly into her ear before scampering off out of the mead-hall. Frigga smiles indulgently at her son’s retreating back.

When the feast has ended, Frigga and Odin both end up creeping by the nursery to check on their two children. They peer in to see that Thor has liberated Loki from her cradle, is curled up around her protectively, and is soundly asleep.

Husband and wife both smile softly, taking in the image of two small, angelic children sleeping quietly together, the picture of innocence. They leave quietly, neither wishing to disturb either child’s rest accidentally, and they are halfway to their own bedchambers when Loki’s crying pierces the air.

It has been over a century since they’ve had to deal with the irregular sleeping schedules of babes. Frigga groans aloud when she remembers what it was like to care for Thor as a newborn.

A desperate thought comes to her, panicky but hopeful: perhaps jötunn children begin sleeping through the nights sooner than their Æsir counterparts do.

-o-

It turns out, unfortunately, that jötunn babies do not begin sleeping through the night earlier than an Æsir child would. In fact, it seems to take even longer for Loki to start sleeping through the night than it did for Thor.

Frigga isn’t particularly upset, because she finds out that jötunn children do not get colicky.

-o-

  
Loki cries big fat tears, and she does not stop; she has been crying since shortly before the noontime meal, and it’s nearly dinner. She wails, she sobs, and she throws her little baby fists around in displeasure. Frigga knows why – the poor child is teething.

When Thor had started teething, it was distressing to see him with his face scrunched up and tears streaming down his face, but at least there had been a simple solution. She’d given him a chilled rag to chew on, and it had soothed his pain.

However, for Loki, nothing short of Jotunheimr is cold enough to ease her pain.

Frigga has chilled rags how she used to for Thor. She has wrapped small chips of ice in those same teething rags, given her poor daughter small chunks of ice and large chunks of ice, and yet they don’t relieve Loki of her pain. In fact, everything only seems to make Loki fussier and more upset.

So when Loki cries and does not stop, Frigga eventually gives up and cries with her.

It has been more than a century and a half since Frigga has dealt with a teething infant, and it has not been long enough. So after wiping her own tears away, Frigga sweeps the wailing Loki into her arms, and strides down Asgard’s halls.

Today, Odin is located in the throne room to listen to the rabble air their petty grievances at him. Frigga thinks it perfect; though she is no member of the rabble, she is going to air this particular grievance loudly and repeatedly.

Odin is the one that brought Loki into their life and home. Loki may as well be a child of Frigga’s body for all that Frigga loves her, but Loki cries and does not stop.  
Odin can spend a day in front of the whole court listening to the never-ending sobs of the child he brought to Asgard. Frigga is planning to spend the rest of her day relaxing in her baths.

-o-

The murmurs of the council cease when Frigga enters the room beaming and carrying the young princess, the prince trailing behind her. “Odin,” she says, “you will never guess what has just occurred!”

Odin raises his eyebrows. “Oh? What is it, love?”

“Loki has just taken her first step,” Frigga announces, proudly as a peacock strutting around.

The council members then witness perhaps one of the most bizarre occurrences ever seen in Asgard.

Frigga places Loki on the ground, careful to keep her daughter upright on wobbly baby legs. When she lets her daughter go, she encourages her with a bright smile and a, “Go walk over to your father, Loki!”

Loki looks over to her father, and then at Frigga again. She stares at Frigga blankly.

Frigga sighs. “Walk over to your father? Show him you can walk, Loki?”

Loki frowns a tiny frown, and toddles over to Thor instead. Frigga takes her daughter gently and turns her to face Odin again.

“Go on, Loki,” Frigga urges her.

Odin is waiting expectantly for his daughter to waddle over to him; he is definitely not expecting Loki to plop herself down on the floor, scrunch up her face, and start crying.

The councilmen are privy to seeing their king crouch down about a foot away from his wailing daughter and call frantically for a piece of honeycomb or a toy, anything to make her stop crying.

Loki seems far more willing to walk over to her father when he has a piece of sweet honeycomb in hand.

-o-

“Mama. Loki won’t say my name. Is she broken or somethin’?” Thor asks with an irritated scowl.

“No, Thor,” Frigga explains. “Some babies just talk at different paces. I suppose Loki doesn’t want to be speaking right now.”

“That’s stupid. She should want t’ talk t’ me! I’m fun to talk to.” Thor does not pout. That was not a pout. That was princely displeasure. Loki was his baby, and she should be talking to everyone, but she wouldn’t even say his name!

“Thor…” The tone of voice Frigga used was never a good tone when directed at him. It sounds like he was going to be confined to the royal quarters for a week.

“Fine, it’s not stupid,” Thor says. “Still. Why won’t she talk t’ me?”

“Just keep trying, Thor,” Frigga sighs in exasperation. “She’ll talk eventually. Give her time.”

Thor turns back to Loki, crouching down in front of her again. “Thor. Say Thor. Thoooor,” he drawls out.

Loki stares at him, completely disinterested. Thor persists with the determination of a spoilt child. “Say it! C’mon. Thor. Say Thor, Loki.”

“Nnyo.”

Thor whirls around again to face his mother. “Momma, did you hear that? She told me ‘no’!”

“Nnyo.” Loki smacks her lips together and giggle. “Nyo nyo no no no nononononono!”

Frigga laughs with her daughter and bends down to press a kiss to Loki’s brow. Thor frowns and crosses his arms, glaring at his mother and Loki. “Say Thor!”

“No no no,” is Loki’s happy answer.

“Thor, I’m sure she’ll say your name eventually.” Frigga smiles and runs a hand through his blond hair. She picks up and balances Loki on one hip before she reaches down for Thor’s grubby hand. “Let’s go inside now, children, it’s almost time for your naps.”

Thor groans. “I’m not even tired, Mama…”

-o-

After Loki says her first word, she learns many other words quickly. She says ‘yes’ a day after she said ‘no,’ and ‘mama’ after that. After ‘mama’ comes ‘papa’. Personally, Frigga’s favorite word that her daughter has learnt would have to be ‘dumb’.

Frigga almost thinks that Loki could say Thor if she wanted to, and just doesn’t choose to.

When Loki leans into her ear to whisper, “T’or dumb!” loudly, Frigga’s suspicions prove to be correct.

-o-

A girl of almost two centuries and a boy of more than three centuries should know better than to throw food at each other in the mead hall, or at any time at all honestly, and yet here the two children are. The little rapscallions don’t even have the decency to look ashamed of themselves.

Loki’s dress is sticky with watered-down sweet wine, skyr, and mashed fruit. There are strips of meat and little chunks of bread tangled into the blond mass that is Thor’s hair, and his tunic is heavily stained with cream and pudding.

Frigga wants to scream in frustration. These unabashed children could not be the prince and princess she raised – perhaps her actual children were been stolen away in their sleep, and the two she saw before her were uncivilized beasts pretending to be Thor and Loki.

The laundry maids are lucky in that Loki is still young enough to wear only white clothing; the dress can and will be bleached. The poor girls are apoplectic when they see the young prince’s shirt.

Frigga makes Thor personally apologize to all of the laundry maids before she sends him off to bed.

-o-

Sometimes, when Frigga is busy weaving, her children gather around her feet and sit there quietly. While her fingers are plucking at the tangled knots in her tapestry, quick as a cricket, Thor’s arms will always find their way around her calves in a loose hug, and Loki will lay her head softly on her mother’s lap.

While she works at the loom, she hums tunes. If it is a tune her children know, Thor will start singing to it and Loki will join in. When the songs are slow bedtime songs, their singing is very good, almost like a choir. They do passably well when it is a drinking song, which is something that amuses Frigga endlessly.

Today, they are not very good at singing. The song is a marching dirge; it goes up and down the scale, it is meant to boom, and it is for men at the warfront, not children at their mother’s knee. It’s sweet to hear them try for her, nonetheless.

Frigga untangles lives and souls from the knots in the weaving, as is her duty as the Allmother, and dreads the day she comes upon Thor’s thread or Loki’s.

-o-

Today, Odin has an hour or two of spare time, and so he decides to take his children down to Asgard’s treasure vaults. He shows them every artifact and regales them with every story of acquisition. 

He shows them the great hammer Mjölnir, and tells them how another Loki, Loki of Utgard, was the one to give it to Asgard. He shows them the Infinity Gauntlet, and tells them that how it would be very dangerous were it to fall into the wrong hands.

He shows them Asgard’s most recently gained item, and watches Loki’s face the entire time.

She is transfixed in the Casket’s bright blue glow, her eyes moving away from the box not even once. Odin sees her hand reach out, as if to touch it, and –

“No, Loki,” He tells her sternly. “The Casket is dangerous to the touch; you might be struck frozen to the core.”

Loki drops her hand back to her side and looks startled, as if she had not even realized what she was doing.

Odin nods once at her, and then begins the tale of the Long War between the jötunn and the Æsir. Thor knows a little of the war (having been born at the beginning of it) and Loki, being born at the end of the war, knows none. When his story finishes, Loki pauses. Then she asks, in a tremulous voice, “Do the jötunn still live?”

Odin is about to answer his daughter, but before he can, Thor answers for him. The problem being that Thor’s answer is wildly inappropriate.

“Aye, sister, they live yet, but when I’m king I’ll hunt the monsters down and slay them all!” Thor says with a violent gesture. He turns to his father with pride in his eyes and thensays, “Just as you did, Father,” in an earnest tone.

Odin frowns. “No, Thor. The jötunn are not monsters, nor would you want to instigate another war. A wise king must never seek out war, though he must always be ready for it.”

“I’m ready, Father!”

“Ready for war?” Odin asks disapprovingly. “Perhaps one day you will say that and have it be true.”

Odin grabs his daughter’s hand to squeeze it reassuringly – though she does not know what for yet, one day she will, and the thought breaks his heart. He holds his son’s hand as well, and leads the both out of the treasury.

“I’ve had enough history for today,” Odin says lightly. “Haven’t you? Let’s see what your mother is up to.”

-o-

Thor swings a blunted wooden sword around in the royal gardens while Tyr tries to guide him in the drills and forms of beginner swordsmanship. Loki and Frigga watch on the sidelines while perched on a marble bench.

Loki leans heavily on her mother’s side, never taking her eyes off her brother. “Do I have to go to weaving circle, Mother?” Her words are hardly audible in the din of Thor’s practice session.

Frigga clasps a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and holds her tightly. “Do you find something wrong with the idea of learning how to weave?”

“No, Mother, but…” Loki says hesitantly. “But I think it sounds rather tedious to sit around listening to court girls’ gossip while twining thread together.”

Frigga rubs Loki’s shoulder comfortingly. “Would you try it, for me? If you don’t like it, you can always quit. I think you ought to try, though.”

“I suppose I could try it,” Loki says grudgingly.

“That’s a good girl,” Frigga murmurs.

For a time, they are quiet, simply sitting together and watching Thor hold form after form and preform drill after drill.

“Mother?” Loki breaks the silence once again.

“Yes, Loki?”

“Could you make Tyr teach me swordsmanship too? He teaches Thor, but he won’t teach me. Every time I ask him to, he pats me on the head like a dog and tells me to ‘stick whomever with the pointy end’ if I ever had a need, and then tells me I’ll never have a need to use a sword.”

“No,” Frigga says, looking thoughtful, “I can’t make him teach you the ways of a sword if he does not want to.” Loki looks crestfallen. Frigga goes on to say, “But, dear daughter, I have an even better idea.”

Loki’s entire face lights up. “What is it?”

“I was a shield-maiden, in my youth. I can teach you just as well as Tyr could. If you try going to the weaving circle, I’ll teach you the fighting arts. Do we have a deal?”

Loki smiles. “Yes, Mother, I believe we do.”

“Good,” Frigga says, returning her daughter’s smile with her own.

They look up from their conversation just in time to see Thor slip in the dirt, bonk himself on the head with his own sword, and fall to the ground in a heap.

Ladies, Loki is told almost constantly, do not snort while they laugh. So Loki is very glad she is a girl yet and neither a maiden nor a lady…Though Frigga is a lady, and she snorts in her laughter as well.

-o-

Weaving circle is definitely not one of Loki’s favorite things, though it is tolerable enough.

The court girls are sickeningly saccharine to Loki in the ways only girls in the court can be, and Loki does not overlook that behind every kind gesture they give to her is their own unsubtle desire to find a higher station. A girl who is nice to her and pretends overtures towards friendship either wants to be her handmaiden or to snatch Thor up and marry him, so that she may be queen.

Few girls do not act in this obviously manipulative way towards Loki. One of these girls is actually very nice.

Her name is Sif Einarsdóttir, and Loki adores her soon after they meet. Sif is brash, and blunt, and interesting. She is not fond of weaving either, and like Loki, Sif wants to learn how to fight properly. Sif watches the boys at their drills longingly while Loki sits at her side.

Loki begs her mother to teach Sif and her the fighting arts together.

When Frigga meets Sif, she holds the young girl’s hand gently and examines it. Frigga smiles at Sif, and drops her hand. “Yes, I will teach you the fighting arts, Einarsdóttir. Your hands are more suited for the sword than the loom, and you have the battle lust in you.”

Sif doesn’t stop smiling for weeks after that.

-o-

Fandral nudges Thor in the middle of their game. “What about Loki, then?”

“Fandral, don’t be grotesque!” Thor cries out, smacking his friend on his shoulder. “Loki is my sister. Ugh.”

“Not by blood, though,” Fandral says seriously. “It wouldn’t truly be incest.”

“You, Fandral,” Thor says slowly, “are deplorable.”

“I can’t believe it, though,” Fandral enthuses. “The one woman whom you’d fuck Amora before – and it’s your own sister!”

“Of course I’d tumble about with Amora before I’d even think of doing such a thing with my sister! By the Nine, Fandral, are you half-witted?”

-o-

Her hair flows freely down to the small of her back, a golden circlet placed on the top of her head. The dress she wears is elegant in cut and a bright red – the same shade as Thor’s cape, Thor’s colors. It’s striking, but not quite to her tastes.

When Loki looks in the mirror though, she has to admit she looks beautiful and every bit a princess.

Thor’s thousandth name-day is today, and his coronation in a few hours. Loki is worried for him.

When he is crowned king, Odin is going to announce his son’s betrothal. No one honestly knows whom he is to be married to – he may be married to some witchy girl and nobody will know! The thought of her brother marrying a horrid woman makes her frightened.

Moreover, there will be ambassadors from every realm in attendance. There will even be jötunn arriving. After eight and a half centuries, there will be jötunn outside of Jotunheimr. Loki thinks of what Thor said so many centuries ago, and hopes none of the jötunn turn hostile. Thor will kill them all if they do.

Loki pushes these silly worries out of her mind, though. Odin would not promise Thor to an awful woman, and he would not invite the jötunn if he thought they would attack. With a sigh, Loki leaves her chambers in search of her elder brother.

She finds him pacing nervously in the halls of the royal wing, drinking a cup of wine and waiting for a servant to bring him his helm.

“Nervous, brother?” She calls out, delighted to have found him. He is nervous, she knows, but it’s not as if he will ever admit it.

“Have you ever known me to be nervous?” Thor booms in reply.

“Well,” Loki pauses, for dramatic effect, before breaking out into an impish smile. “There was that one time in Nornheimr…”

“You must be mistaken, sister; that was not nerves, but the rage of battle.”

“Mhm,” Loki agrees indulgently. “It must be so.”

They gently bicker back and forth until a servant brings his helmet to him. Loki knows it must be nearly time for the coronation to start, and so she grins at him.  
“I need to be leaving now, Thor. Give us a kiss, and go talk to Mother before your big day.”

Thor snorts and smacks her shoulder playfully. “Stop it you, and be on your way.”

“Oh, Thor, you’ll be a fantastic king,” She laughs as she leaves.

-o-

  
“Thor Odinson, my heir, my first born. So long entrusted with the mighty hammer, Mjölnir, forged in the heart of a dying star. Its power has no equal - it's a weapon to destroy or as a tool to build. It is a fit companion for a king. I have defended Asgard and the lives of the innocent across my realms in the time of the great beginning. Do you, as my successor, swear to guard the nine realms in the same way?”

“I swear.”

“And do you swear to preserve the peace?”

“I swear.”

“Do you swear to cast aside your selfish ambition and to pledge yourself only to the good of the realms?”

“I swear!”

“And on this day, I Odin Allfather, proclaim you...”

Before Odin finishes his sentence, there is a burst of ice from one of the jötunn. Nine of the ten jötunn invited to Asgard (who had been standing still and impassive) spring into motion, ice exploding from their hands and filling up the room.

Asgard screams, men searching for improvised weapons, and women cringing back into the walls. A spire of ice hurtles towards Thor, about to stab him through. Thor swings Mjölnir around, smashes it before it can even come close to piercing his skin.

Loki shrieks when a jötunn grabs her arm; the red silk freezes and shatters, and she can’t breathe because she is not frostbitten like she should be.  
The jötunn stares at her. She stares at – it. Him. Her. Odin had told her once that Jötunn were both. Them? What do you call someone who is both?

Her arm is blue, and she thinks she is going to vomit in the throne room.

While the jötunn is still staring at her in disbelief, Loki shoves one hand under her skirt and scrabbles for her knife. She pulls it out, and slams it harshly into the jötunn’s stomach. His hand falls away from her arm, he frowns, and is about to grab for her again when she dives clumsily behind a pillar.

She looks at her arm again. The blue is gone. Loki readjusts her grip on the dagger, and jumps back out into the fray.

-tbc-

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter of Ásynja revised! I hope this continues to go as well as it has so far, and that I get further in this version of the story than I did the first. 
> 
> Fixed a lot of awkward wording problems, lengthened almost every scene by adding more detail, cut a few unnecessary scenes out, etc.
> 
> Please let me know what you think!


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